The present application relates generally to an improved data processing apparatus and method. In one aspect, the present application relates to generating recommendations to achieve a desired brand personality perception.
Initially, it should be noted that the term “brand” refers to any designation of a product, service, location, or any other designation of an entity. Brands are often represented by trademarks, service marks, trade dress, or other identifier of a good, service, or source of goods/services. In addition, the term “brand personality” refers to a set of human personality traits or characteristics associated with a brand or trademark. For example, the Apple™ brand is considered by many to be a “young” brand personality while Texas Instruments™ brand is considered by many to be a relatively “old” brand personality. In addition to being useful for promoting business success, brands are often socially significant to individuals or groups who equate various emotions and/or human attributes to the brands which in turn elicit those emotions and/or attributes in the persons consuming the entities associated with the brands. In this way, a brand's personality can create brand identities for a customer that satisfies the customers' self-expression needs. For example, consider the consumption of red wine. While few customers can distinguish taste differences between various red wines, the brands associated with specific wines have different personalities and, when served in a social setting, can make a powerful statement about those who drink them. Moreover, a person's view of the brand's personality can affect the physiological and/or psychological reaction a person has to the product associated with the brand, e.g., the wine may taste better to the person because it is associated with brand A while another wine associated with brand B may be less pleasing. This emotional reaction to brand personality is confirmed with research in social psychology which shows that material possessions have a profound symbolic significance for their owners, as well as for other people. Indeed, the influence of symbolic meanings of material objects on how consumers make choices can be critical to understanding the creation and maintenance of a user's personal and social identity.
While there has been interest in both industry and research communities to predicting human personality from social media data and developing corresponding personalized recommender systems, such recommendation systems typically rely on the predicted human personality identify and recommend products purchased by other similar consumers without taking into account how the relationship between human and brand personality can affect a user's preferences, satisfaction, and their social interactions with others. As a result, existing solutions for generating product recommendations do not make effective use of brand personality information to help consumers navigate the product purchase options.